Young Writers Society

I still can't thank you enough for the critiques. ^_^ I have changed around the order of some things--don't freak out. If you can correct my German, I might love you extra. And, if you congratulate me for completely slaying Word on "a boy like me", I might love you extra, too.

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(a word from our sponsors)

and if you are a deity of any sort

please don’t go.

- Regina Spektor

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(static on al-jazeera)

Baghdad, 2003

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Husayn had never worn shoes—it was either too hot or there wasn’t enough money or his older brother needed them more. It was easier that way. His feet had grown rough and callused, but he was five years old and had five dinari and five things to remember to buy.

wahid, ithnan, thalatha, arba’a, khamsa.

chickpeas, garlic, lentils, flour, oil.

It was Tuesday and the man with the yellow bird would be there, sitting behind the lady who sold onions. Husayn loved to hold his finger out and let the little bird hop onto his finger. Sometimes, if he was gentle, he could raise his thumb to its chest while it closed its wrinkly eyelids and slept.

“Husayn!” He turned around. Mrs. Nasri with the pita bread was sitting behind her cloth-covered table, a coin purse between her fingers. “What does your mama want you to bring home today?”

He smiled. “Chickpeas, garlic, lentils, flour, and oil,” he said, and Mrs. Na

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(for a very important date)

Omaha, 2004

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When Alice awoke, she wished she hadn’t.

The hospital was bright and everything was white, including the doctors. Though a steady stream of morphine flowed through her veins, she could still feel. Her skin screamed beneath bandages and itched where she knew it should hurt.

It hurt worse when the bandages were off and it was just her legs, bright pink and raw. The ring of black had since been scraped away, and all that was left was blistered and sore.

You were in a fire, they said. You’re lucky you got out alive.

Alice wasn’t so certain she was lucky in the least. She asked about her Kunshi, but everyone shook their heads and looked away, leaving her alone in a cold hospital room but nothing with the steady electronic beat of her heart and the twisted metal crucifix above her head.

She stared up at the silver-cast Son of God. “You’ve got a sick sense of humor,” she said, spooning hospital Jell-o into her mouth with a plastic spoon.

Christ stared back at her, brow frozen into a position of pain.

Alice sighed.

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(a whisper)

Abadan, 1978

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LIDA sits on her bed, staring blankly at the wall. She is too tired to cry, though we cannot see her face for the veil.

ALLAH: Lida? Are you listening, Lida? Lida?

There is no answer.

- FADE OUT -

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(a boy like me)

Laramie, 1998

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High plains, winter—the earth is vast and barren, monochrome lack of color lined with twisted metal and speckled with cows, lethargic but breathing. Small gasps of steam pour from their noses and mingle in the air, rising in the sky as one.

The roads are empty but for the occasional pick-up truck, and one cyclist. Her thin wheels leave a long snake track in the frost-dusted asphalt, winding up hills and down, never braking. Slim hands hide beneath two layers of gloves.

There is a scarecrow fallen from a fencepost, useless while everything is dead. She grips hard on the handlebars and leaves her bike propped up against the side of the ditch, scraping small scars in the layer of ice. The scarecrow’s clothes are torn and spattered with something dark. Its hand is still tied to the fence, though now it has twisted into an impossible angle, fingers purple with frostbite and jutting up like the barbs they are pressed up against.

This is no scarecrow.

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[The driver flicks his cigarette out the window, and while it is still burning, it glows against Wyoming asphalt like the stars in the Wyoming sky. His hands are trembling, and the truck makes small jerks to the left. It doesn’t matter, it will never matter—no one travels these roads after dark. There’s nothing but infinite, terrifying black beyond the haloes of headlight.

In the back seat, their boy is happily drunk—euphoric; more lovesick than ill. “I’ve never met someone…someone from here,” he says, his lips slack. The man sitting next to him forces a smile, though there is nothing to see. “Where are we going?”

“You’ll see. It’s beautiful.”

The boy laughs. His hand creeps over to the man’s knee, thumb stroking the inseam—Wranglers. It’s always Wranglers; always slightly dusty. “I’m so happy I met you,” he whispers, clumsily, sliding over the seat and into the man’s lap. It’s bitter cold, but in the rearview mirror, it looks more hideous than sensible. “I love you, Simon, I––”]

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(misery, missouri)

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The day Charlotte was supposed to go back to school, it rained. In the usual course of events, she had forgotten her umbrella and was five minutes late, so was forced to stand—dripping and shivering—until someone bothered to unlock the front doors. She had no need to be gawked at anymore than she already was, so she sat in the OUT OF ORDER bathroom for forty-five minutes, sitting on the edge of a sink with a paper towel wrapped around her bare shoulders.

When she was dry and standing at her locker, a group of cheerleaders decided to bring her some cheer. Their normally bared breasts were covered in zip-up hoodies zipped to their necks, either in grief or for protection against The Perv. Charlotte guessed it was the latter.

“We heard your dad, like, died.”

“Yes. He committed suicide.”

Collective gasp. “OhmyGod, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

There was nothing more to say after that, so they turned and left, unzipping their hoodies as they went. Charlotte hugged her books to her chest and walked to second period, where, as luck would have it, the teacher had changed the seating arrangement. She now shared a table with her ex-girlfriend, Grace.

Charlotte forced a smile, but it wavered quickly and was reduced to a mere twitch. Grace chewed her gum angrily. She had been a lesbian, once, but then her parents found out and sent her to homosexual rehab--Straight To Jesus, which simultaneously made her heterosexual and gave her the ability to spew Bible quotes at will.

“Heard your dad died,” Grace said. “Jesus spits on those who kill themselves before it is their time.”

Charlotte’s brain had been stupefied by the domino-stack of misfortune that had been sent her way. “He…needs a bath.”

Grace never replied. It was probably better that way.

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(good morning, vietnam!)

Ho Chi Minh, 1967

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After Sa’ang’s death, his mother fell apart at the seams and spent most of her days standing in front of the stove, pushing butter around a frypan until it burned itself into a greasy cake. Lanh left her that way in the morning, and came back when she was still stirring, stirring, stirring.

She’d never sorted through Sa’ang’s things. They sat, in his corner of the room, gathering dust. The bed sheet was pulled away, his schoolbooks remained open on his desk. His alarm clock still went off at seven-thirty every morning, as no one bothered to turn it off.

The frypan was crackling on the stove as Lanh stepped into the bedroom and shut the door behind her. There was Sa’ang’s cot, her cot, the cot her mother shared with her father and the baby, who cried during the night. A mirror was propped up against the wall. She stood in front of it, skinny and dirty. When she pulled her hair away from her face, she looked like Sa’ang—thin and androgynous, with big black eyes and pencil-line lips.

There was a pair of scissors in his desk. Gently, she pried open the drawer and went back to the mirror, clumping her hair in one fist. She hacked at it until she could pull away with a clump of black, her head now crowned with an uneven bowl of hair. A few more snips of the scissors, and it was short and lank. She propped open the window and tossed it into the dirt, where some thrifty mother bird would find it for her nest.

A rumpled shirt still poked out of the edge of his basket. She pulled her clothes off and tucked them underneath her mattress, where nothing but mice would find them. With her heart fluttering, she buttoned buttons worn by his thumbs and folded collars flattened by his hands. Sa’ang appeared in the mirror, tousled and scared.

He pulled open the bedroom door to make his homecoming.

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(dia de los muertos)

Sonoroa, 1953

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No one believed in anything anymore, and so the church sat empty on Sundays, vacancy open to spooks and dust. Paint fell off the walls and onto the ground; the pews dried in the heat and split with the cold. The water in the baptismal font soon evaporated, and rats lapped at the wine left uncorked in the storeroom.

Javier pressed his ear to the floor in the middle of the aisle, dust clinging to his clothes and his hair. The wood pulsed, relaying some heartbeat deep in the ground; something mystical and sacred.

The voices began.

They sang in languages he couldn’t speak and sighed in tongues he’d never heard, and when they whispered, he could not reply. He slowed his breathing to match the pulse, and prayed that someday his heart would beat the same.

And when his heart ceased to beat, he wished to find the source.

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(alles geht in ordnung)

Dresden, 1945

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Unser Herzen schlagen für Sie, währen unser Munds schreien für Sie—wenn sind Sie in Himmel, können sie uns nicht hören? Können sie nicht etwas tun?

Können sie nicht schreien für uns?

Alles wir haben gewünscht war für Sie zu spricht deine Name.

[our hearts beat for you while our mouths scream for you—if you are in Heaven, can’t you hear us? Can’t you do something?

Can you not scream for us?

all we wished for was for you to say your name.]